Burn Zone

Burn Zone, is Danny Lyon’s newest published work. Burn Zone is a Cri de Coeur directed at the artist community and our youth asking them to join the fight to save planet Earth. In it, photographer and filmmaker Danny Lyon, tells the story of his return to New Mexico after thirty years and the dramatic changes caused there by the use of fossil fuels. Illustrated with new black and white photos and including a list of fifty climate criminals, prepared by the climate activist Josephine Ferorelli. Each listed member of government, or the academy, has received massive amounts of money from the fossil fuel industry, in order to lie, and undermine any affective democratic action to save the planet. These are serious criminals in our midst, on the level of those charged with genocide during the Nuremberg trials. One of them has been nominated for Vice President of the United States.

Bleak Beauty offers the entire contents of Burn Zone free to anyone who wishes to read it, download it, or print it. We want to have the widest possible distribution of this work, and hope you will put it out there, to every person and every website and organization possible.

Sample from the book

This is a question of power. I realized early in my life that my own ability to direct my life and destiny was power, and the more my own life and destiny were in the hands of others, the less power I had. But many people, like journalists, teachers and artists, have another kind of power, the power to influence others. The power of the press is very real and on it is built one of the great foundations of American society.

I also realized when I was young that one of the great dilemmas of modern life was the utter powerlessness of the individual. The catastrophe that faces the planet is a perfect example of that. None of us as individuals is responsible for this. None of us as individuals can stop it or even affect it through our actions. Nor can we stop war or start one, free the prisoners, or disarm our murderous citizenry. We cannot even control the ugliness around us. All we can do, if we have the means, is go somewhere else. The lack of individual power is central to modern life.

But when we act, when we publish, when we break the law we do not
agree with, when we act politically, we empower ourselves. This has a profound effect on how we feel about ourselves. However much we are tossed about by circumstances and history, we have saved ourselves because we have done something to change ourselves, and ultimately, to change history. History moves slowly, like a turtle, but it moves nevertheless, steadily and relentlessly. I have lived my life. I have fished in the San Juan and sat by an open fire with my grandchildren. It is your life you are fighting for. Someone who is 20 today will live a long time into the future. You are in a fight for your life.

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thank you danny for your relentlessness. i sit with my high school students every other week in silence for 30 minutes and look at a single photograph. we then talk together about what we see and how it makes us feel. this week will be one of yours from your years with SNCC. my students marched with other DC high school kids 2 days ago here to be heard. this generation is willing, but need you. thank you for showing them how simple it is to be engaged. i have looked at your work my entire life and need it now myself more than ever. thank you again. lely constantinople

This generation born in war, born in the jail cells of the South, born at the Pentagon march, watches in disbelief as the country is paved over, malls replacing corn fields, synthetic food replacing corn, cash replacing value. What has become of us? Is the country brain dead? Is this what we have done with our freedom? Our greatest surviving value is greed. Is that what our legacy will be? What shall we tell the children?

The 16mm Films of Danny Lyon, preserved as high resolution scans

After his ground breaking work as a photojournalist in the 1960’s, Danny Lyon turned to films, making a series of non-fiction films in the 1970’s and 1980’s. With the recent recognition of the 2016 de Young/Whitney retrospective, funds were provided to preserve these remarkable 16mm films. High resolution digital scans were made from the original A&B negative rolls under the close supervision of the artist. The DVD covers themselves, first made for VHS tapes, have been recognized for their power and realism, and are on display at the San Francisco Museum of Art show which opened November 3rd, 2016.

These are great digital copies of some of the best non-fiction films of the seventies and eighties, exclusively available from Bleak Beauty.

The entire body of Danny Lyon 16mm film work can also be streamed on Vimeo. The sixties meets the twenty first century.View Bleak Beauty Films